A Common Language to Remedy Distorted Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement Statistics

Abstract

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) has emerged during the past decade as a niche practice area for lawyers, accountants, and other compliance professionals. At present, however, the FCPA’s conversational waters are muddied because this niche practice area (often referred to as FCPA Inc.) lacks a lingua franca, or common language. Rather, various FCPA Inc. participants have adopted creative and haphazard counting methods that infect the quality and reliability of FCPA enforcement and related statistics of interest to many in the legal and business communities.

To clear up the FCPA conversation, this Article proposes an FCPA common language regarding the basic issue of what is an FCPA enforcement action. The FCPA common language proposed will improve the quality and reliability of FCPA statistics and thus allow a more cogent conversation to take place regarding FCPA issues.

Keywords: FCPA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act